The last years of the Queen's reign are as tragic as the last years of the woman's life. The strength of the country was in a strange way bound up with the strength of Elizabeth, and as her strength declined so did the greatness of the country. Never has a woman used her power with such magnificent results. England was the husband, for whom her life was lived, and all the greatest men in England lived fiercely to win glory and her smile of approval; and they strove the harder because within them was the knowledge (such knowledge was an inspiration) that their great Queen could also be a beautiful woman to the man who found favour in her eyes. She lived greatly, and created almost an age of great men with such puissance did she employ one side of a woman's creative power. A child is not the only new life which a woman may produce, if she has once outgrown the little limits of what is miscalled purity. Coarse, as in many ways the Elizabethan age undoubtedly was, men did not fall into the fantastic error of confusing celibacy with chastity. The body had full scope, and in consequence the spirit throve untrammelled. But Elizabeth was growing old. To the end she kept her grip on life; but effort was necessary. In that effort alone weakness became apparent. Strength was used not to plunder life as she had plundered it hitherto, but to withstand its encroachments. She would not yield. There is something great and yet something infinitely pathetic, childish even, in her indomitable will to resist the slow inevitable power of Time. At last illness, which she had always dreaded with superstitious horror, and against which she had always defended herself with every charm which superstition could devise, laid hold on her. Sir Robert Carey, who was Lord Warden of the Border, came to the Court, which was then at Richmond, in March, 1603, to see his friends and to renew his acquaintance. He found the Queen ill-disposed. "I found her in one of her withdrawing rooms sitting low upon her cushions. She called me to her. I kissed her hand, and told her, It was my chiefest happiness to see her in safety and health, which I wished might long continue. "She took me by the hand, and wrung it hard, and said, 'No, Robin, I am not well!' and then discoursed with me of her indisposition, and that her heart had been sad and heavy for ten or twelve days: and in her discourse, she fetched not so few as forty or fifty great sighs. "I was grieved at the first to see her in this plight: for in all my lifetime before, I never knew her fetch a sigh, but when the Queen of Scots was beheaded.... I used the best words I could to persuade her from this melancholy humour; but I found by her, it was too deep rooted in her heart, and hardly to be removed. This was upon a Saturday night: and she gave command that the Great Closet should be prepared for her to go to Chapel the next morning."